Latest NEH in the News

When veterans and their families return to civilian life they face challenges that largely go unexplored by the nation’s intellectuals.

Virginia Tech English professor James Dubinsky said some universities are changing that and are beginning to study veterans much the same way that a generation ago they began women’s studies and African-American studies programs.

Dubinsky said Tech’s Liberal Arts College and University Libraries is working toward building a veterans studies program. Two other universities — Arizona State University and the University of Missouri at St. Louis — are further along in creating similar programs and are co-sponsors of the forum. Tech also has won support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Mostly at universities where veterans are being studied, only one or two professors in history, psychology, sociology, arts at universities are looking at the issues, he said. The conference gives them a chance to connect with each other and with the people they are studying.

Macedon Public Library recently received a Revisiting the Founding Era grant to implement public programming and community conversations that explore America’s founding and its enduring themes.

The library will receive 10 copies of a reader containing scholarly essays on selected historical documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, $1,000 to help implement programs and additional digital resources, training and support from Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and American Library Association.

These resources will allow Macedon Public Library to launch a program series on the Founding Era. This includes three presentations planned for June and July by Laura Free, of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Richard Newman, of Rochester Institute of Technology, for adults and Matthew Robbins, an Advanced Placement history teacher at Palmyra-Macedon High School, for teens in high school.

Revisiting the Founding Era is a three-year national initiative of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, presented in partnership with ALA and National Constitution Center with support from National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant provides 100 public libraries across the country the opportunity to use historical documents to spark public conversations about the Founding Era’s ideas and themes and how they continue to influence lives today.

Dr. David Trowbridge, an associate professor of history at Marshall University and creator of Clio, was one of four scholars invited to share his work at the 2018 annual meeting of the National Humanities Alliance in Washington, D.C., March 12.

Trowbridge was joined by scholars working to interpret history and preserve heritage sites in the United States, the Middle East and Central Europe. The panel was organized by Daniel Fisher, project director for the National Humanities Alliance, in order to demonstrate the importance of the humanities and highlight the ways that universities and foundations are supporting public engagement though the humanities.

“We were very pleased that Dr. Trowbridge was able to join this distinguished group of publicly engaged humanities scholars,” Fisher said. “Clio shows what is possible when experts collaborate with the community. The Clio website and mobile app offer scholars and organizations a way to share expertise about local history with the world.”

The panel was organized around the theme of “Changing Narratives about the Humanities in Higher Education” and featured projects supported by the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Trowbridge discussed efforts at Marshall to create Clio, a website and mobile application that universities, libraries, historical societies and museums use to connect people to the history and culture that surround them.

Fairbank Professor in the Humanities and Chair and Professor of German and Comparative Literature Azade Seyhan has received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship to support her research. The title of Seyhan's project is "The Exodus of German Culture to Turkey, 1933–1945." The project will be a book-length analysis on academic exiles from Hitler’s Germany and the Turkish higher educational institutions in which they took refuge.

Mona Frederick, executive director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, and Christina West, assistant vice chancellor for federal relations, attended the National Humanities Alliance’s annual meeting and advocacy day March 12 in Washington, D.C., and met with members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation as well as several other congressional offices with ties to Vanderbilt to advocate for robust federal humanities funding through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

“We are grateful to have such strong support for the NEH on Capitol Hill,” Frederick said. “It’s important to remind our members of Congress of the importance of the Endowment and to thank them for their continued support.”

This year’s keynote speaker at the NHA meeting was Jon Parrish Peede, senior deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who recently was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as NEH chairman. Before joining the NEH, Peede served as publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2011 to 2016 and was on the staff of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2011. A Vanderbilt University alumnus, Peede graduated in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in English and later earned a master’s degree in Southern studies from the University of Mississippi.

“The NEH has been such an important partner when it comes to academic research in the humanities—research that has enriched and enhanced communities throughout the nation and throughout Tennessee,” West said. “We look forward to a continued mutually beneficial relationship with the NEH.”